A friend
came to town recently from California. She was a coordinator for the
Obama campaign in Ohio, and so we all owe her a debt of gratitude. Naturally,
this was her first trip to DC since those middle school pilgrimages
everyone takes – our own version of Hajj. But this trip was not about
circling around that marble phallus downtown and praying. She was in
town for some ‘progressive organizing’ conference. Naturally, it was
the young, middle management Obama folks gathered together to exchange
tips on how to best knock on doors, and figure some plan going forward,
something a lot of folks in DC are doing these days. But I was shocked,
talking to some of these kids, at how they had no understanding of how
things really work around here.

Don’t get
me wrong, all these people should be applauded for pouring their hearts into
putting that godforsaken wasteland of Ohio (among others) in the blue column.
It would make me happy to learn that ACORN actually did commit voter fraud
there – the real affront to democracy is the notion that those rednecks in
Southwestern Ohio actually get to pick who is president for the rest of us
(cf. 2000 and 2004). But you should have heard what some of these kids – and
I use that word very consciously, and with some condescension – were saying.

One guy, a
bright, recent Yale grad with an aura of entitlement so real it splashes his
piss back onto his pants, wanted to take on my standard, sneering mention
of the hook-line-and-sinker adoption of ‘realism’ in the new administration.
But he tried it not by attacking my attack (“Hey, at least they’re not neocons,”
would have worked), but by questioning the term. “What does that even mean?
That you’re going to be realistic?” he said sarcastically, clearly choosing
the Socratic Method to go after me, which I admired until he started spouting
some nonsense about health care reform. “Realism is a center-right school
of foreign policy, dude. We’re not talking Caravaggio here.” God forbid the
conversation turned to neorealism and we had to discuss Antonioni instead
of Mearsheimer and Walt. Our young grasshopper was suddenly taken aback. “Oh,”
he said rather sheepishly. “It is? Well…” And he continued to babble on.

And every
one of these kids is among the hundreds of thousands of applicants for a few
thousand jobs in the Obama administration But, and forgive me for this one,
thank God those jobs are going to the same old greybeards. Send these young
kids back out there, outside the beltway, where they belong. They understand
those people on the outside and can talk to them. In DC, knocking on strangers’
doors will invariably get you someplace you don’t want to be – almost always
either just plain old danger, or some intensely weird scene. It could be the
DC cop in my friend’s building that shoots gay porn in his place.

Or take my
friend Alessandro’s next-door neighbor, a good-looking Latina lady named Teri
Galvez. Teri was on Mitt Romney’s Latin-American advisory board (not Latin
America – Romney knew as much about foreign policy as this Yalie), is the
Executive Director of the Miss District of Columbia pageant, and had the biggest
fucking spider balloon I’ve ever seen hanging off of her roof on Halloween.
Oh, did I mention that in October she held a Log Cabin Republican’s fundraiser
for DC Ward 2 candidate Christina Culver (a hot chick “outsider” from Kansas
who lost by a four to one margin and bragged about holding the incumbent to
“his lowest totals since 1996”)? Okay, she was rocking a “Nobama No Socialism”
lawn sign, so you probably wouldn’t knock anyway. But if you did, I guarantee
you experience something you wish you hadn’t. Self-loathing gay costume ball,
anyone?

But, in fairness,
not all these organizers were so bad that they were just drifting through
this place they’d put on a pedestal with their fluttering eyelashes. Some
of these guys knew their shit and could function in the real world at large.
But almost to a man, they had some deep disconnect with DC. They’d just worked
their tuchuses off to put a guy in a job they didn’t have the foggiest clue
about.

“So, how do
you feel about some of the picks for the cabinet and staff so far?” I asked
one lovely progressive Obama organizer.

“Oh, they’re
great. I think it’s perfect! What this country needs right now is a good centrist
government that can be effective.”

“Progressive,”
I said, “is a euphemism for left-wing. You see how that’s problematic? You
can’t call yourself a progressive and say what we need is a centrist government.
Those things are mutually exclusive.”

“Well, that
would be true if I thought that change started in Washington. But it doesn’t,
it starts with people around the country.”

Now that made
steam pour out of my ears. I guess I’m just an arrogant DC-type, too, when
you get right down to it. Even though I’m a cynic and think the whole town
reeks of the rotting human soul and crisp, freshly printed money, I felt like
the sort of self-important bozo you see walking around downtown with their
nametag hanging in front of their white-collared shirt. Suddenly I wanted
another drink, but I wanted the next one at home, alone with the lights off
pondering whether I should destroy myself for becoming what I despise.

Y’know, I
really do hate those fuckers around this town, and there are loads of them.
Most of them, like me, will never see a glimmer of real power, but nonetheless
they’ll force their business card on you and insist that you call them, which
I never do. Opinions, it turns out, are like assholes. But not because
everyone has them; it’s more because no one wants to hear yours. These guys
love to talk to me because I got this press pass (in my back pocket unless
I’m somewhere that requires me to have it out, and even then, you wouldn’t
catch me dead with one of those plastic slips or one of those ball chains
that looks like miniature anal beads). Every time one of those pricks shows
up in the news, they tell their assistants (if they have one) to shutter their
office while they J.O. to their own quote. “Doris, the Times made their
piece with me as the kicker quote – hold all my calls for ten minutes and
bring me a towel.” So you can imagine how badly they love to talk to me. I’m
practically creating tailor-made porno for them.

It’s from
those douchebags that the establishment pulls the best and brightest (or in
the case of Patrick Clawson, the gayest and brightest hair-colored) to fill
their ranks. Some end up in government posts, and some end up in think tanks.
Quick aside: Think tanks are more than a refuge for outgoing opposition appointees
– they actually serve a powerful function in forming policy. It’s basically
a form of ideological outsourcing.

Anyway, the
thought that those typical DC assholes actually do populate the halls of power
almost makes you want to call the organizer kids back out. Give them a seat
at the table and find out what the people behind all those fucking doors they
knocked on are actually thinking. See how much these outsiders – who change
“starts with,” remember – can do with the government. I wonder how Joe the
Average from New Holland, Ohio, would do to regulate complex securities. And
you think Margie Churchgoer, of Vega, Ohio (Las Vega?) will do a good job
at the State Department? I can see it now: official embassy dinners around
the world to serve MickeyDee’s and Miller High Life (easily arranged in Baghdad,
where the world’s largest imperial outpost is little more than the offices
of the U.S. prefect plus a massive suburban-style strip mall). The people,
or as the preamble says, “Them the People of the United States,” would do
a bang up job. After all, I’m sure the population of Pink, Ohio, was all over
the wrong-minded decision to go to war in Iraq – I can see the massive street
protests like it was yesterday, or never.

See, that’s
the problem. Change doesn’t start with the people, and the Iraq War is the
perfect example. The dregs of Ohio had as much say in going to war as the
dregs of the Capitol Building. Exactly nada. The choice to go to war was made
by, at most, a few dozen people. From there, it was the easiest sales pitch
in the world. Good advertising spokesmen (Colin Powell is to war as John Madden
is to tough-actin’ Tinactin), and a concerted media campaign is all it took.
I mean, I don’t want to get all conspiracy theorist on you (if for no other
reason than 9/11 Truthers are the most impossible people to have political
conversations with), but the Project for a New American Century guys made
the decision in the late ‘90s that Saddam had to go. The advertising agency
of Bin Laden, Atta, and Associates gave them the perfect sixty-second ad,
and there was no question what was going to happen. A few dozen people! Not
the people.

So now, a
few years after the people dropped the ball on the decision to invade, they
wise up a little. They finally buy the idea that it was the wrong war, but
they are regular consumers, and they know there are strict return policies.
The Iraq War is that book that George Costanza took into the bathroom – it’s
been flagged and no one is taking it back. You can’t, for example, refund
4,000 plus soldiers’ lives and God knows how many Iraqi ones. Or half-a-trillion
dollars, for that matter, which could probably bail out the big three and
even buy the U.S. government a stake in a few good car companies, like
Toyota or BMW.

But, alas,
the people aren’t going to get the real power anytime soon either. Sure, Obama
may placate the organizers by starting some kind of WhiteHouse.gov Facebook
page, and everyone can be Facebook friends with the administration. But that’s
about as far as it’ll go. The Obama kids have all left town now and returned
to their job hunts. But don’t you worry: They’ll be back for another weekend
visit soon. A Tuesday visit, actually, in January. Four million of them. The
thought makes me shudder, as I can already barely stand to ride the metro
anytime between four and seven.

Throw in a
little DC-style police state security, and the inauguration is going to be
a real shit show. All these organizers will be sleeping twelve to a room like
those Irish immigrants next door when I was in college in Boston, and the
DC-types will be crashing in their offices to avoid the crunch. Then there’ll
be a lot of hoopla, followed by balls. The organizer kids, of course, won’t
have any balls (in every sense of the word) and will probably be going back
to their shared apartments to drink Pabst Blue Ribbon after they get rejected
from every full bar in town. Perhaps after two or three in the morning they
can stumble in some joint in the city, but I don’t know about that. They’ve
declared 24-hour bars for the inauguration, and combined with a housing crunch,
that sounds like a recipe for bars full of the homeless-for-a-day. Just thinking
about the whole deal makes me want to vomit.

That’s why I’m doing the only
decent thing I can think of: Getting the fuck out of Dodge. I’ve already
booked my round-trip week-long ticket to the Rockies for a week of isolation.
I’ll be sitting in front of the boob tube watching next to a roaring
fire, and laughing to myself as The People get crushed against police
barricades. I’m sure the locals at my vacation spot will wonder what
the hell a guy from DC is doing out there when everyone is going to
DC, but the people never got it anyway.

Anchor Downs is a professional DC reporter who attempts to soothe his
ragged conscience with anonymous BEAST editorials.